GeneralJim:I have a master's degree in software engineering, ten years experience as a developer, and teach undergraduate-level courses at a university. What are your credentials?

Congratulations. You now own a biatch. Kinda low rent, of course, but she's yours... I'll bet that leaves a mark.

I'm curious GeneralJim, what are your credentials. Where did you get your PhD from and which science field was it in again? You seem to act like you know an awful lot about science, I wonder what your background is.

I am perpetually saddened by:(A) how little the average American* knows about science, the scientific method, and/or climate change (and yet how much they *think* they know), and(B) how people think they're being intelligent and critical-minded by epousing the talking points of large oil companies.

Zafler:This is hilarious, we have thread shiatters in here who continuously ignore links to scientific data and I get a post deleted because I had a descriptive graphic demonstrating nicksteel's posting habits ... for trolling other farkers?

W.T.F.?

You see where Drew's loyalities lie. Expect Drew to give him some TF now as a reward.

GeneralJim:Zafler:That code you're referring to in the CRU hack was never used in ANY research done. Ever, finito, end of story. The very first link in my initial post here discusses all the B.S. about that CRU stuff.

Maybe that's technically correct. Graphs are often NOT used in research. On the other hand, that ancient ForTran program WAS used to generate the "hockey stick" graph that appeared in the IPCC report. Interestingly enough, if you generate random numbers, it will produce a hockey stick graph out of them, as long as the trend is upwards. It doesn't really matter what the data is. Yeah, that sounds like the basis for making trillion dollar decisions, and shipping civilization from the U.S. to China and India.

1) Not true. Some details are here on how to verify that this is not the case.

2) An easy way to verify this, which Mann did when challenged, is to publish a comparison of his reconstructions against those obtained in other studies:

(Reprinted from "On Past Temperatures and Anomalous Late 20th Century Warmth", Eos, 84, 256-258, 2003.) Dark Blue line is the original study, and it runs roughly with every other attempt.

You know, the vaxxers, creationists, and so on are actually ascientific -- they simply either don't know or ignore science, and rely upon other means of forming opinions about the world. The recent turds in the punchbowl of climatology are, however, ACTIVELY ANTI-SCIENTIFIC. They, as well as anyone, know the rules and methods of science, and are consciously subverting them. Thank God they are very few in number.

I suppose one easy way to check is to look at the professional literature:

"The 928 papers were divided into six categories: explicit endorsement of the consensus position, evaluation of impacts, mitigation proposals, methods, paleoclimate analysis, and rejection of the consensus position. Of all the papers, 75% fell into the first three categories, either explicitly or implicitly accepting the consensus view; 25% dealt with methods or paleoclimate, taking no position on current anthropogenic climate change. Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position.

Admittedly, authors evaluating impacts, developing methods, or studying paleoclimatic change might believe that current climate change is natural. However, none of these papers argued that point.

This analysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies. Politicians, economists, journalists, and others may have the impression of confusion, disagreement, or discord among climate scientists, but that impression is incorrect."

This is part of why I agree with Jon Snow that "scientists vs. deniers" is exactly like "scientists vs. people who think vaccines cause autism". On one side, you have scientists with an overwhelming number of primary studies backing their claims in the professional literature, and on the other side you have crazy people yelling about conspiracies and making bare assertions.

Of course, you're only here to stir up shiat, and you don't even believe the tripe you're typing, but I figured I'd clarify for other readers.

Gunther:Do people really have to reply to GeneralJim? He's the least subtle troll since McCainDemocrat, are you really expecting to be able to have some kind of reasonable discussion with him?

Meh. Kicking his lies down the street is a useful illustration. It's pretty obvious that the more he posts, the more people in general see that the climate deniers are the science equivalent of teabaggers. I assume he's wearing a tri-cornered hat and debating the merits of descent vs. patriotic as one of his other alts.

chimp_ninja:This is part of why I agree with Jon Snow that "scientists vs. deniers" is exactly like "scientists vs. people who think vaccines cause autism". On one side, you have scientists with an overwhelming number of primary studies backing their claims in the professional literature, and on the other side you have crazy people yelling about conspiracies and making bare assertions.

This is pretty much the way I see science as it merges with the general population though I see it in three sides:

1) People who know the primary literature2) People who do not know the primary literature and defer to group 1 for expertise3) People who do not know the primary literature and somehow feel they are entitled to an opinion equal to group 1

Honest question, and hold back your instinct to label me part of the "establishment" and ignore my point:

Can you imagine this extending to some realm of science that wasn't hyper-politicized? i.e. particle physics? Should results from CERN be required to release all of their source code and data and subject it to mob-analysis? People get Ph.D's to do this, so can you conceive of a level of analysis that is above the general public?

Also, can you see this as a goalpost-moving situation? Once they release data and code, then you scrutinize the calibration data. Once they release that, you demand to get your hands and your oscilloscope on the electronics yourself...

I'll hop into this one....

I think you're getting WAY too much mileage out of very little evidence. Once it is known that the data has been jimmied, it's not unreasonable to ask to see the data. When real scientists examine a data set and present a graph like this IPCC report graph:

it's clear, and concise. It also shows that climate variations, even warmer than now, have happened before. However, these facts don't play well with the alarmists, because it make it harder to prove that, one, the rise is unusual, and, two, that anthropogenic CO2 is the cause. The alarmists wrote an incredibly stupid program, the source code for which you can download, which will produce a graph much like this later IPCC report graph:

when you feed ANY ascending data set into it. Try it yourself. Do these graphs appear to be graphs of the same data to you?

Their attempt to erase the "inconvenient truth" of the existence of the MWP, somewhere around 5000 Wikipedia entries were edited to remove references to it, and to the LIA which followed it. But there is overwhelming evidence from history to show both the MWP and the LIA. So, an excuse had to be found to ignore something that wasn't just data in a data set. To that end, this graph was produced by Michael Mann:

allegedly showing that while the northern hemisphere, where we have excellent historical records of the unusually warm period, was warm, the southern hemisphere, and anywhere for which we do not have records, was colder than average, making there be no global warming during that time. The above graph is from HERE. (new window)

Oh, really? Of course, the original data is not included. I wonder if the mid-ocean data in the southern hemisphere was from radio buoys, radiosonde, or satellite. I expect all the remote sensors were rather primitive, seeing as it was all over by A.D. 1250. Clearly, there is NO data for any of those areas, and he just farking made it up. Additionally, what few records we do have show that the MWP and LIA happened in the southern hemisphere as well.

So, my friend, I don't see it as at ALL unusual to ask about the original data behind statements and graphs coming out of the CRU, or from anyone involved with them. It's a few people who are strategically placed, but they've done a huge amount of damage. It's not unusual to want to see the data when there have been manipulations, falsifications, and outright manufacture of data to support a particular conclusion -- it doesn't mean that an endless stream of ever more irrational requests will be forthcoming. Seriously, one has to be either an idiot or perfectly gullible to believe these clowns without good proof. We are going to need to redo the work from original data. This whole CRU crowd needs a good, swift cockpunch.

The war on science continues. Bitterness and jealousy have always existed in science and the peer-review process. People make a big deal about it in climate change because (SURPRISE!) there is a lot of political capital at stake in the scientific outcome.

It's hard to take criticism from lay-people seriously. They have barely even the slightest understanding of what science is and how it works.

I agree. Poor little me, I simply can't figure out how the following graph was made. And, apparently, the mid-ocean medieval temperature data was lost. Can you point me to another dataset for this? The best reference I've found to date reads "Arrrgh. Cold today. Had to eat the cabin boy." Oh, no, wait... The British Navy wasn't around yet. So, where DID they get the data for this chart?

Uh, proxies. Isotope data, tree rings, sediment information, ice cores in glacial areas, etc. Multiple proxies give orthogonal checks. Which, by the way, is why we know that the Medieval Warm Period was relevant to Europe for a little while. Do you seriously think we have written records on the annual temperature with 1K precision? That we're going off of family bibles and the writings from a time when people recorded dragons on maps? You do know that Fahrenheit's thermometer was from the early 1700s, right? That all data from before then are modern reconstructions based on proxies?

Additionally, what few records we do have show that the MWP and LIA happened in the southern hemisphere as well.

What records do you think exist for that period that weren't proxies? Australian thermometers from 1000 years ago? What records do you trust for the Southern hemisphere 1,000 years ago if you don't understand proxies?

Do I walk in to the Intel factory and start arguing how they're farking up microchips? No. Why? Because I didn't spend my college and 5 years post-bacc education learning the theory and practice of microchips.

Do I walk in to a surgical room and tell the doctor he's a quack and say medical science is all a farce and that I know better than they do? No. Why? Because I didn't spend my college and 5 years post-bacc education learning the theory and practice of medicine.

Do I walk in to a crime scene and start telling the crime scene investigators they're farking everything up and looking in the wrong places and corrupting data? No. Why? Because I didn't spend my college and 5 years post-bacc education learning the theory and practice of crime scene investigation.

Do I walk to the local fire department, hop on their fire truck and at the next 3 alarm fire start shouting orders telling them they're all wrong in how they fight this big fire? No. Why? Because I didn't spend my college and 5 years post-bacc education learning the theory and practice of fire fighting.

If the fire department issues a press release that says that satellite data show that the average temperature of the city is far below the temperature necessary to start a fire, so they're taking the summer off, you'd have reason to complain.

Do I walk in to scientific discussions and start questioning their science, methods and conclusions? Yes. Why? Because I DID spend my college and 5 years post-bacc education learning the theory and practice of scientific thought and experimentation.

Who the hell are you to think you can skip the whole education part and jump in on the conversation?

Well, First Amendment issues aside, it's our money being discussed in THIS scientific discussion. They have the ability to end up destroying civilization out of this, and sending us back to a new sort of hunter-gatherer society. Everybody has a voice in this -- that's what happens when you mix politics and science. And, see the graph of medieval mid-ocean temperatures, above. Can you explain ANY POSSIBLE WAY that is not just a fabrication by Michael Mann to support his dumb-ass hypothesis? No, seriously, ANY way? And, yes, when people have such clear evidence, including admissions, that the scientific process has been corrupted, by all means, ANYONE has a right to comment. Science as religion, and scientists as priests is an incredibly bad idea. That kind of power and ability to say, as you are trying to say here, "shut your whore mouth, I'm a scientist" can only lead to the abuse of that power. Clearly the whole donnybrook over Piltdown Man AGW should be sufficient evidence of that. A few weasel scientists got power, and immediately started abusing it.

And, in general terms, your idea that any questioning of any scientist is questioning, or even rejecting, science is erroneous. It also points out, quite clearly, that you are a serious part of this problem. Your clearly stated regal attitude towards science shows all that's wrong with placing scientists on a pedestal. Scientists are humans, and only a purity of the checks and balances keeps that from corrupting what we know of the world. You'd remove the best of those checks and balances by insulating and elevating scientists. Bad monkey! No banana.

There's literally probably 100 independent studies touching on temperature reconstructions. There's high agreement from multiple methods (cited above, even) on fairly similar traces for the last 1,000 years or so.

What "original data" are you referring to? More than four centuries or so back, people didn't even have a system of units for temperature. It's all done off of modern reconstructions.

As an aside, you're totally stealing your faked outrage from the Young-Earth Creationists here. "Dinosaurs? I've never SEEN one. You didn't either! There's no PROOF!"

lennavan: "If you want to make a scientific argument with any merit, stop quoting and citing news articles. Find, read and quote the primary research literature behind the article."

Oh, I've tried that. 99 times out of 100, the primary research literature includes substantial caveats and references to large uncertainties. When I point out these caveats and large uncertainties, and note that such large uncertainties tend to detract from the (often inexplicable) conclusions of the primary research, that's when the sputtering about "error bars" and insults start.

I just love the circular nature of the alarmist arguments.

"Peer-reviewed literature suggests AGW exists""Yeah, but we find that a small group of asshats have taken over the peer-review process, and are trying their best to see that only articles supportive of AGW get published.""The vast majority of peer-reviewed literature agrees with me.""Well, sure, the peer-review process was corrupted. Here's a paper that has gone through peer review that corrects a math error in the current parameters to the computer models.""That was published in HUNGARY, FFS.""Yeah, because after it was peer-reviewed, it was prevented from being published, because it disproves AGW, or at least limits it to a negligible value, not worth concern.""The vast weight of peer-reviewed literature disagrees with it.""Sure. But, his corrections WORK when put into the models. They then can predict accurately from historical data, unlike the current setup.""The vast majority of peer-reviewed literature disagrees with him, and he's a well-known idiot."Rinse, repeat.

I'm curious what Step 2 is, because I've published a number of scientific articles, and I don't want to accidentally "destroy civilization". I'm pro-civilization, and while I wager that the number of scientists who are actively pursuing the goal of "destroying civilization" are small, your advice will help me keep an eye out for them.

While I probably am a good gatherer (good endurance, eyesight, etc.), I'm not much use with a bow. I assume that after climate scientists "destroy civilization", it will be hard to obtain more advanced weaponry, so I probably won't be a good hunter. So obviously, I'd like to keep a really careful eye out for climate scientists "destroying civilization" and reverting humanity to a "hunter-gatherer society". Do you foresee job opportunities for gatherer specialists? Or will climate scientists force us to both hunt AND gather? I'm not sure how thoroughly they will destroy civilization, and I'd like to know more, because you're clearly a sane person, and not at all trolling.

Zafler:This is hilarious, we have thread shiatters in here who continuously ignore links to scientific data and I get a post deleted because I had a descriptive graphic demonstrating nicksteel's posting habits ... for trolling other farkers?

I've kinda given up on these threads as a result of this crap. GeneralJim is somehow allowed to get away with the sort of attention-whore shiat that would see ANYONE else banned, Brockway and nicksteel continuously insult and troll other farkers... and the mods ban people who call them on it.

Gunther:I've kinda given up on these threads as a result of this crap. GeneralJim is somehow allowed to get away with the sort of attention-whore shiat that would see ANYONE else banned, Brockway and nicksteel continuously insult and troll other farkers... and the mods ban people who call them on it.

Eh, I wouldn't put GeneralJim in the troll category (not that I've been following the GW threads that much for the past few months).

I've been in plenty of conversations/debates with him in the evolution threads, and he started out as a (more or less) creationist. Or at the very least, a doubter of evolution. Given enough reason and evidence, I (and others) eventually explained how evolution works to the point where he (as a non-biologist) could understand it.

So given my experience with him on the evolution threads, I'm prone to believe that he actually doubts AGW, and that he's not a troll.

lennavan: lennavan: Joe Blowme: But you know so much about me already i would hate to ruin your perceptions and delusions of grandeur. No matter what i said it would not change your perceptions

Well at least you answered one of my questions. Someone had to put you in your place, I'm glad it could be me.

That said, I should add, if I ever walk around criticizing your profession or how corrupt your profession is that I am not an expert in and know nothing about and such, you can happily remind me to STFU and put me in my place.

Dont have worry bout that, i happen to believe everyone is entitled to their own opinions... its just the facts im worried about and the fact is this process was corrupt or at the very least biased and as a "scientist" i would have thought you could see that but you must be blinded by your professional loyalty to your fellow "scientist" no matter how much they farked this one up.So since you are not a politician i assume you never opine about politics right? By your logic you should just stfu right?

Well, Joe, Bishop lennavan does have a point. There is SOME insight into the scientific process that a scientist would have that might escape a 'civilian.' So, let's see what some REAL scientists say:

Dr. William Sprigg is research professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona and was head of the International Technical Review Panel for IPCC's first report. . . . He also told the Arizona conference, "climate data has been withheld and manipulated "and that it is clear that "someone took out information."

Aynsley Kellow, a professor at the University of Tasmania who was an expert reviewer for a U.N. global warming report, told ABC Radio there was evidence of a "willingness to manipulate raw data to suit predetermined results, you've got a resistance to any notion of transparency, an active resistance to freedom of information requests or quite reasonable requests from scientists to have a look at data so that it can be verified."

"The information is, [based on] all indications from what we can tell from available data and past manipulations and modifications of their claims, likely to be damning on a scale similar to the CRU 'climategate' documents, computer code, and annotations," Horner states.

But if you've collected a body of data which seems to contradict what you've been saying all along and you knowingly decide to discard that data and destroy the original test results to hide it, you're no longer "just wrong." You're lying. And that, to quote Hoyt's criteria, is "a huge story."

As an increasing number of highly qualified scientists slowly began to realize that the "climate science" community was a facade-and that their vitriolic rebuffs of sensible arguments of mathematics, statistics, and indeed scientific common sense were not the product of scientific rigor at all, but merely self-protection at any cost-the veil began to drop on what has already become clear as the greatest scientific fraud in this history of mankind.

Don't understand science and can't back up your assertions? Do what GeneralJim does, vanish until no one else has posted in the thread for 6 hrs and then post multiple walls of text in a row. You're still wrong, but it LOOKS good.

Man, I wish I were as cunning and sneaky as the credit you give me. I just check Fark when I have time and inclination. When I have time, I'm likely to have time for a couple of hours, so if I get involved in a thread, I read down the whole thing, commenting where I see fit. That often results in a block of postings of which a significant percentage of the weight of postage is mine.

I've tried, and failed, to imagine the paranoid mind-set that takes a simple pattern and pulls out diabolical motive... maybe I'm not quite sick enough to do that. It kind of creeps me out to think of some naked, pimply teenager locked in a dank basement, fapping typing furiously, plotting out all my "moves," probably using paper cutouts. Gah!

On a previous thread, there was another farkwit -- or one of your alts -- who was totally tied up with the idea that I had abandoned an argument because I went to bed. Shortly after I got up, I went back to the thread, read from where I had stopped the night before, and, shortly came to the point where he is taking credit for winning SEVEN MINUTES after he posted his drivel. I had "refused to answer" or some shiat. He is then grilling me about when and how I post, to "verify my integrity" or some such crap. I don't know what illness you jackholes share, but I'm positive it's quite difficult to pronounce.

/ Oh, thanks for the compliment on how my posting looks...// Is your life REALLY pathetic enough that my pattern of posting, and your imaginary scenaria of evil intent that your brain fabricates about that pattern, is important to you? My condolences.

GeneralJim: I have a master's degree in software engineering, ten years experience as a developer, and teach undergraduate-level courses at a university. What are your credentials?

Congratulations. You now own a biatch. Kinda low rent, of course, but she's yours... I'll bet that leaves a mark.

I'm curious GeneralJim, what are your credentials. Where did you get your PhD from and which science field was it in again? You seem to act like you know an awful lot about science, I wonder what your background is.

I don't have a PhD, and never claimed to have one. I am, however, smart enough to attribute text correctly, as you did NOT, with Tofu's words above. Damn, I even tint my words green, to help out challenged folks like yourself.

I also have been an ardent student of science since... well, longer than I can remember. I know that the essence of science is curiosity, guessing at causes of events, and then figuring out how to test those guesses against reality. I also know enough (or BELIEVE enough?) about science to be happy when I find out that something I thought to be true was actually false. Each advance of my knowledge gives me pleasure. Those concepts seem TOTALLY absent in those PhD holders who are trying to force an non-working, falsified theory down everyone's throats, because belief in it will allow corrupt politicians to get more control (and taxes) while creating more research jobs. You know, colorless, humorless, prissy and arrogant cocks... like you.

So, let me toss you a little troll chum. Thank me later. What trade school are YOU attending?

So, do you care to explain how "proxies" managed to show mile specific data for the WHOLE of EACH OCEAN? Were they collecting ocean floor sediment... or sentiment? Are you REALLY going to defend that assclown when he's pulling data out of his arse?

And, where we DO have real, as opposed to imaginary, proxies, why is it that they show the MWP and LIA in the southern hemisphere, too?

There's literally probably 100 independent studies touching on temperature reconstructions. There's high agreement from multiple methods (cited above, even) on fairly similar traces for the last 1,000 years or so.

Yeah, bonehead, and we're going to have to go back to those studies, and get THEIR original data again, because you can't trust the CRU cocks not to have farked it up. That's a LOT of re-collecting.

What "original data" are you referring to? More than four centuries or so back, people didn't even have a system of units for temperature. It's all done off of modern reconstructions.

Original data... do you speak it, motherfarker? What do you mean "What original data?" What there IS, numbnuts. We'll have to go back to the individual dendroclimatologists, and get their data again. What about not trusting the CRU do you not understand?

As an aside, you're totally stealing your faked outrage from the Young-Earth Creationists here. "Dinosaurs? I've never SEEN one. You didn't either! There's no PROOF!"

Your confirmation bias is showing. And you're an idiot. You simply don't get it that people can have an aversion to crooks in science without being Luddite Creationists, do you? You're such a dumbass.

GeneralJim:Okay, farkwit, you explain how we operate a society like ours with carbon neutrality.

We don't need to have zero carbon emissions as a planet- there are natural sinks.

As for how we can cut emissions using already available technologies, I'm glad you asked. Stabilization wedges provide a handy conceptual framework, allowing people unfamiliar with the issue but convinced of the enormity of the challenge to see how dividing the problem up illustrates that it's actually well within our current capabilities[1][2][3][4][5]...

GeneralJim:Yeah, bonehead, and we're going to have to go back to those studies, and get THEIR original data again, because you can't trust the CRU cocks not to have farked it up. That's a LOT of re-collecting.

What role do you think that "the CRU cocks" play in terms of the field of paleoclimatology, that you believe it to be necessary to provisionally throw out all millennial paleo recons?

Is there a Soros:Media::CRU:paleo meme floating around the right wing blogs and NewsCorp papers you read?

GeneralJim:So, do you care to explain how "proxies" managed to show mile specific data for the WHOLE of EACH OCEAN?

I see plenty of cross-hatching. But if you're asking how temperature data for relatively large spatial areas can be reasonably inferred from a sparser set of data points- there is an impressive correlation with respect to changes in temperature anomaly within areas ~1200km apart and less. Additionally, there exist well-known climatic teleconnections, wherein changes in a certain location are virtually always associated with changes (though not of the same type- the magnitude and even sign could differ) in other parts of the world, sometimes half a globe or more away. You can pretty reliably determine the aridity of parts of the American southwest by looking at a temperature curve from Greenland ice cores, for example. Or know that an El Niño is likely pummeling California with storms by looking at pressure readings in Tahiti or Darwin, Australia.

Are you REALLY going to defend that assclown when he's pulling data out of his arse?

Interestingly, I see plenty of know-nothing denialists willing to accuse Mann specifically of fraud, but yet completely ignore that he is usually one of many co-authors, often at the top of their respective subdisciplines, who would likewise have to be complicit in any of Mann's "crimes". What would someone like Jeff Donnelly stand to gain by associating himself with Mann, were your tinfoil beliefs even remotely true? Why don't you ever accuse Donnelly of fraud and misconduct?

chimp_ninja:What records do you think exist for that period that weren't proxies? Australian thermometers from 1000 years ago? What records do you trust for the Southern hemisphere 1,000 years ago if you don't understand proxies?

Reading from recent back meant I didn't get to see this, or I would have just not bothered. LOL.

mgshamster:Eh, I wouldn't put GeneralJim in the troll category (not that I've been following the GW threads that much for the past few months).

I've been in plenty of conversations/debates with him in the evolution threads, and he started out as a (more or less) creationist. Or at the very least, a doubter of evolution. Given enough reason and evidence, I (and others) eventually explained how evolution works to the point where he (as a non-biologist) could understand it.

So given my experience with him on the evolution threads, I'm prone to believe that he actually doubts AGW, and that he's not a troll.

Is he still an evolution denier? I ask because it's pretty clear in these threads that even if he gives up a talking point or five after getting smacked around, he quite obviously never actually pursues and accepts the mainstream scientific perspective.

I've been in plenty of conversations/debates with him in the evolution threads, and he started out as a (more or less) creationist. Or at the very least, a doubter of evolution. Given enough reason and evidence, I (and others) eventually explained how evolution works to the point where he (as a non-biologist) could understand it.

Ack. Confirmation bias again. My position started out that I simply did not see how pure Darwinian evolution could have generated the Cambrian Explosion. I may not be as flexible as you imply, because I still believe that. But recent (to me) insights about horizontal evolution, especially the fact that it is much more prevalent than I thought, convinces me that enough is understood about the process of evolution to explain the vast, short term proliferation of new species.

/ .. and thanks to y'all for the help. (Nowhere near as much BS and chest beating on the evolution threads as the AGW threads -- imagine that.)

"BS and chest beating" like claiming that a single paper published in an obscure Hungarian meteorology journal- which was riddled with errors so elementary that it has been literally given to undergrad atmospheric physics students as a "find the flaws" assignment- proved that modern climate science improperly treated the greenhouse effect?

"BS and chest beating" like claiming that a single paper demonstrated that climate sensitivity was well below the 2-4°C value that modeling, paleoclimate, and observations tell us it is- a paper that was so error-riddled that in response to just a few of its major problems was revised by its author bring its conclusions well into agreement with that aforementioned range?

I could go on. The point is that you approach this subject with both an enormous amount of ignorance and bad information as well as a pretty disturbing confidence in your own understanding. It's a recipe for almost unpersuadable ignorance.

If you approached the subject with a healthy skepticism but an open mind and understanding that you don't really know the subject matter well at all, people would treat you much, much differently.

Alternatively, you could go out and actually pursue the subject academically. There is another Farker (YoungSwedishBlond) who is pretty conservative politically, and by virtue of this fact consumed heavily biased "news", and thought anthropogenic warming was a hoax. The interesting part is that he also was interested in extreme weather and meteorology. When he actually had to start learning about this stuff rigorously- not just reading denialist blogs and WSJ op-eds- but in an academic setting, he found out that he had been fed a bunch of nonsense and now knows that anthropogenic warming is unequivocal. You should talk to him some time.

Jon Snow:I could go on. The point is that you approach this subject with both an enormous amount of ignorance and bad information as well as a pretty disturbing confidence in your own understanding. It's a recipe for almost unpersuadable ignorance.

GeneralJim: Okay, farkwit, you explain how we operate a society like ours with carbon neutrality.

We don't need to have zero carbon emissions as a planet- there are natural sinks.

Well pardon my skepticism, but the big conferences, which have so far failed, have been discussing an attempt to slow the rate of increase of emissions, rather than reducing them. It's a good thing that increases in CO2 won't cause any trouble, or we'd be seriously farked.

As for how we can cut emissions using already available technologies, I'm glad you asked. Stabilization wedges provide a handy conceptual framework, allowing people unfamiliar with the issue but convinced of the enormity of the challenge to see how dividing the problem up illustrates that it's actually well within our current capabilities[1][2][3][4][5]...

These references are new to me. They deserve some reasonable perusal. I have NOT had time to do that, and have just skimmed them a bit. But, with that caveat, it seems like one of those cheesy real estate infomercials. You know, the ones that tell you "Find someone, get them to sell you their house for a third of what it is worth, and then sell it at market. Yes, that would make one a good income. That one little step, getting someone to sell you their home at a small fraction of its worth, is a bit of a tough sell. (or buy, if you prefer.) Just level off, and produce no more CO2 than now, and you'll realize THIS much improvement in 50 years. Yeah... but, as mentioned, just reducing the rate of increase seems to be a near impossibility. Stopping increase? Yikes.

GeneralJim: Yeah, bonehead, and we're going to have to go back to those studies, and get THEIR original data again, because you can't trust the CRU cocks not to have farked it up. That's a LOT of re-collecting.

What role do you think that "the CRU cocks" play in terms of the field of paleoclimatology, that you believe it to be necessary to provisionally throw out all millennial paleo recons?

First, let me point out that I'm using "CRU" to mean the whole gang, although not all of them are employed by CRU - Michael Mann, for one.

As to what they've done, I know you're a climategate denialist, but taking data, farking it up with massaging programs that first are designed to prove a hypothesis, rather than discover the truth, and second, are some of the crappiest code I have ever had the displeasure of reading. However, I DO recommend that people read the code, whether they are proficient in ancient languages or not; the comments are worth the price of admission.

And, once they're finished massaging... no, that's not violent enough of a phrase... Okay, once they're finished pistol-whipping the data to "prove" AGW, they then throw out the original data. They are supposed to be a global repository.

But, I do give them credit for huge clanking balls. After they pistol-whip the data, they refer to it as "value added" data. That's so choice! One of my friends backed his dad's car into a post in a parking lot when we were teenagers. When he told his dad about it, he called it "getting it customized." Spomehow, his dad didn't think it was quite as clever as he did, and he suffered probably as much for that flippant comment as for the actual damage. The "value added" phrase is very much like the "customized" phase. It should have a similar result.

Anyway, after they turn the accurate data into "value added" data, they throw out the original data. Once more, they THROW OUT THE ORIGINAL DATA. [Insert "Bears repeating" picture here.]

If you look at charts prepared from data fifteen or twenty years ago, and compare those charts to charts made from the very same data (in theory) recently, they trend in different directions, or to different degrees. How did that data change, and why, if it is being 'fixed' is the fix always in a direction that favors AGW alarmists? Someone posted .gif files in a thread a month or so ago which showed maybe 12 or 15 graphs flipping back and forth from the old chart to the 'value added' chart made by the CRU cocks. It was cool. Erm, it was an excellent visual, and the new ones all showed MUCH more warming. How odd.

As much as you're in denial over this, the actions they admit are NOT standard practice science. Most of it would cause you to flunk high school science -- and perhaps have to go see the principal. And these insufferable cocks are supposed to be at the HIGHEST level of science, not noobs. There is no excuse.

Is there a Soros:Media::CRU:paleo meme floating around the right wing blogs and NewsCorp papers you read?

I don't read right wing blogs, or read NewsCorp papers, or watch Fox news. Why do you feel that anyone who disagrees with you must be a programmed idiot? Are you that insecure about your beliefs? If not, you should be.

/ I may well START though... Anything that lathers you up so can't be all bad.

o Fearmongering convinces countries to agree to U.N. carbon plan.o Businesses which generate CO2 are taxed near to destruction.o Petroleum-based fertilizers are outlawed.o American agriculture returns to old methods, loses efficiency.o Nearly 100% of U.S, food production kept in U.S. for consumption.o Loss of U.S. food on international scene leads to starvation.o The human population follows the pattern of overshoot, crash, and die off.o Wars, starvation, genocide, in some unimaginable combination

My favorite part is that people would be sticking to a ban on petroleum-based fertilizers even after the international war/starvation/genocide festivities began to kill off the human population. Glenn Beck would be proud of your deductive process.

You make the gun nuts who are stocking up to protect themselves from socialism (whatever they think that means, at least) seem sane. I'll refer back to this thread if anyone wonders why you're such as laughing stock around here.

Ctrl-Alt-Del:Jon Snow: I could go on. The point is that you approach this subject with both an enormous amount of ignorance and bad information as well as a pretty disturbing confidence in your own understanding. It's a recipe for almost unpersuadable ignorance.

The arrogance of ignorance. Also known as the Dunning-Kruger effect.

a cognitive bias in which "people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it". The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than in actuality; by contrast the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to a perverse result where less competent people will rate their own ability higher than more competent people.

Fark should have a Dunning-Kruger tab. General Jim, nicksteel, and their intellectual brethren could duke it out all day on the best way to design a fusion reactor.

GeneralJim:Yeah, bonehead, and we're going to have to go back to those studies, and get THEIR original data again, because you can't trust the CRU cocks not to have farked it up. That's a LOT of re-collecting.

By the way, you realize that none of the studies I'm referring to were done by CRU, right? That CRU is one tiny group in an enormous field? OMG BILDERBERG AND THE LIZARD PEOPLE ARE DESTROYING CIVILIZATION AND UN-GREENING MY TEXT THROUGH THE CRU!

GeneralJim: So, do you care to explain how "proxies" managed to show mile specific data for the WHOLE of EACH OCEAN?

I see plenty of cross-hatching. But if you're asking how temperature data for relatively large spatial areas can be reasonably inferred from a sparser set of data points- there is an impressive correlation with respect to changes in temperature anomaly within areas ~1200km apart and less. Additionally, there exist well-known climatic teleconnections, wherein changes in a certain location are virtually always associated with changes (though not of the same type- the magnitude and even sign could differ) in other parts of the world, sometimes half a globe or more away. You can pretty reliably determine the aridity of parts of the American southwest by looking at a temperature curve from Greenland ice cores, for example. Or know that an El Niño is likely pummeling California with storms by looking at pressure readings in Tahiti or Darwin, Australia.

Oh, really? So, where are the pressure readings from Tahiti or Darwin, Australia? What data is it that he is stretching?

The CLIWOC data only goes back to 1800. Both the MWP and LIA are strongly verified in: the Beijing (China) Stalagmite Layer Thickness and Temperature Reconstruction; the Lake Victoria (East African Plateau) High-Resolution Diatom-Based Conductivity Reconstruction; the Spannagel Cave (Austria) Stalagmite Oxygen Isotope Data and Temperature Reconstruction; the GISP2 ice core, central Greenland; The Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period in the Sargasso Sea (the middle of the North Atlantic).

Most of the above data sets show not only that the MWP and LIA existed, but that the peak of the MWP is warmer than now. Also, both the MWP and LIA were global, rather than hemispheric. As a matter of fact, only when Mann and Briffa put them all together do the MWP and LIA disappear. How does that happen? If a large number of datasets show the same two events, why do both events disappear when the datasets are merged?

Are you REALLY going to defend that assclown when he's pulling data out of his arse?

Interestingly, I see plenty of know-nothing denialists willing to accuse Mann specifically of fraud, but yet completely ignore that he is usually one of many co-authors, often at the top of their respective subdisciplines, who would likewise have to be complicit in any of Mann's "crimes". What would someone like Jeff Donnelly stand to gain by associating himself with Mann, were your tinfoil beliefs even remotely true? Why don't you ever accuse Donnelly of fraud and misconduct?

Whenever I see a fraud in this area, I see the name Michael Mann associated with it. The same is often true for Keith Briffa and Phil Jones. Others, not so much. It appears that the fraud is at the meta-level, where the individual studies are blended for global results -- at the CRU itself, the "upper" level.

So, let me get this straight... Your defense of Mann is that I would have to accuse a few other people of either fraud or poor science if I accuse Mann? Hmmm. All right, I'm okay with that, on a case-by-case basis. I'll still use "Mann & co." or "the CRUnies" or "the CRU" as a collective noun, though. But, yes, I support exposing and humiliating any scientist found to be deliberately jacking his data for a specific result. My accusation of Mann's fraud stands.

Is he still an evolution denier? I ask because it's pretty clear in these threads that even if he gives up a talking point or five after getting smacked around, he quite obviously never actually pursues and accepts the mainstream scientific perspective.

I have never denied evolution, never in my life. That's all in YOUR mind, because you are so faulty at processing information that you believe that anyone who disagrees with you must be "one of them," meaning a fundamentalist, anti-vaxxer, birther, fascist, Fox-watching, Beck-cheering mouth-breather. That shows, not my proclivities, but your cognitive limitations. My problem with AGW is not that it's a Democratic idea, or from 'eggheads,' or anything other than that it doesn't make sense, in the first place, the science is clearly faulty in the second place, and, finally, that it is clearly a horse that the U.N. and other governmental bodies are attempting to harness to implement a massive increase in their influence and ability to tax.

It is your approach, that of attempting to 'enforce' an allegedly majority opinion of scientists upon everyone as an orthodoxy of belief that engenders punishment if not given credence, which is grotesquely anti-science in nature. But, that's what happens when you get your science from a politically orthodox source, and don't farking THINK about it. You are a fool, in the classic sense.

Perhaps, but I have not seen it. I didn't believe there was time for pond scum to develop into the vast array of creatures found in the Cambrian period through Darwinian evolution alone. I claimed there had to be other factors at work. A few people took that to mean I was suggesting divine intervention, and as I always do when I don't understand something, I refused to rule that out, out of hand. I didn't put much stock in it, but I don't believe in limiting solutions unless necessary. Other forms of evolution were discussed, which DO allow for that kind of rapid development. No need to re-play the whole discussion, but it took place with respect, and an air of passing on cool knowledge, rather than beating someone with a safe full of peer-reviewed irrelevance, and insulting them until they either believed or went away.

"BS and chest beating" like claiming that a single paper published in an obscure Hungarian meteorology journal- which was riddled with errors so elementary that it has been literally given to undergrad atmospheric physics students as a "find the flaws" assignment- proved that modern climate science improperly treated the greenhouse effect?

Yeah, like THIS. Nothing at all like this took place there.

And you have made that "find the flaws" argument many times. Time for you to put up or shut up. What references do you have for this, and was the AGW model put to the same "find the flaws" test, 'cause I sure have a bunch of them.

"BS and chest beating" like claiming that a single paper demonstrated that climate sensitivity was well below the 2-4°C value that modeling, paleoclimate, and observations tell us it is- a paper that was so error-riddled that in response to just a few of its major problems was revised by its author bring its conclusions well into agreement with that aforementioned range?

Citation, please.

I could go on. The point is that you approach this subject with both an enormous amount of ignorance and bad information as well as a pretty disturbing confidence in your own understanding. It's a recipe for almost unpersuadable ignorance.

Try again, this time without the projection.

If you approached the subject with a healthy skepticism but an open mind and understanding that you don't really know the subject matter well at all, people would treat you much, much differently.

That's a bald-face lie. I watched quite a few people express simple skepticism, and get totally reamed for it. "Science means you drink the Kook-Aid, you mouth-breather!" pretty well sums up the response to skepticism of peer-reviewed literature.

Alternatively, you could go out and actually pursue the subject academically. There is another Farker (YoungSwedishBlond) who is pretty conservative politically, and by virtue of this fact consumed heavily biased "news", and thought anthropogenic warming was a hoax. The interesting part is that he also was interested in extreme weather and meteorology. When he actually had to start learning about this stuff rigorously- not just reading denialist blogs and WSJ op-eds- but in an academic setting, he found out that he had been fed a bunch of nonsense and now knows that anthropogenic warming is unequivocal. You should talk to him some time.

Oh, gee... You are saying I should go look for someone who disagrees with me? Why bother? You arrogant jackasses jump out of the woodwork at me.

o Fearmongering convinces countries to agree to U.N. carbon plan.o Businesses which generate CO2 are taxed near to destruction.o Petroleum-based fertilizers are outlawed.o American agriculture returns to old methods, loses efficiency.o Nearly 100% of U.S, food production kept in U.S. for consumption.o Loss of U.S. food on international scene leads to starvation.o The human population follows the pattern of overshoot, crash, and die off.o Wars, starvation, genocide, in some unimaginable combination

My favorite part is that people would be sticking to a ban on petroleum-based fertilizers even after the international war/starvation/genocide festivities began to kill off the human population. Glenn Beck would be proud of your deductive process.

I'm going to have to start watching Glenn Beck. If you 'tards all hate him so much, he must have something worthwhile to say...

I know you're ignorant, so I'll explain. Our food delivery system is pretty goddam fragile. We are making almost exactly as much food as we need, and are making food almost exactly as fast as is possible. If U.N. inspired bans on petroleum fertilizers were to be put in place, by the time the full effects were noted by the general population, a growing season would already have been lost to inefficiency which would generate the rest of the stuff. "Don't worry, we dropped that ban, there will be enough food NEXT year" isn't very comforting to someone starving.

But I like the fact that you are getting the idea that the way to survive is to ignore the U.N. That's a start. Have a banana, you earned it.

You make the gun nuts who are stocking up to protect themselves from socialism (whatever they think that means, at least) seem sane. I'll refer back to this thread if anyone wonders why you're such as laughing stock around here.

Please do. I simply LOVE the idea that all this will be available in the future, so your idiocy, and that of other science-denying AGW and CRU supporters can be fully displayed. Sweet!

GeneralJim: Yeah, bonehead, and we're going to have to go back to those studies, and get THEIR original data again, because you can't trust the CRU cocks not to have farked it up. That's a LOT of re-collecting.

By the way, you realize that none of the studies I'm referring to were done by CRU, right? That CRU is one tiny group in an enormous field? OMG BILDERBERG AND THE LIZARD PEOPLE ARE DESTROYING CIVILIZATION AND UN-GREENING MY TEXT THROUGH THE CRU!

Well, obviously your medication isn't working. I suggest we bypass the ECT and go right for the lobotomy.

The CRU is supposed to be one of the, and even THE global repository for climate data. THE repository might be accurate, because the U.N. is using only information filtered through the bias of the CRU. Lizards aside, that makes the CRU, and the data they keep, vastly important. When people want, say, ice core data, they don't contact the university that sponsored the study, they go to the CRU for the data. If the data the CRU has is NOT the original data, because they erased it after jimmying it, people only get the value-added fudged data, and assuming everything is kosher, will use that as if it were real. The CRU data sets have been changing over time. Note the way the last 1500 years of temperature data were represented in the first IPCC report, as opposed to the "hockey stick." The original IPCC report clearly showed the MWP and the LIA. Now, after 15 years of CRU control, they no longer exist. Weird, huh?

Since the global repository has been fraudulently altered, SOMEONE will have to go back and get the original data from the universities or researchers, and recompile it, and re-integrate the various proxy datasets. That is a metric arseload of work. That meta-data ONLY exits, much of it, at the CRU, and it's been changed. Nice. Cockpunching is too good for these despicable jackasses.

So I guess since you're so concerned about those charges, you'll rest easier now.

The CRU is supposed to be one of the, and even THE global repository for climate data.

Only in your head. You seem to need boogeymen.

Since the global repository has been fraudulently altered, SOMEONE will have to go back and get the original data from the universities or researchers, and recompile it, and re-integrate the various proxy datasets. That is a metric arseload of work.

Not really. They can go to a library, note that the CRU publishes only a tiny fraction of the total international literature on this topic, and what papers they do publish line up well with existing work. After all, they only employ about 50 people, and couldn't possibly make a dent in the thousands of papers published on climate change. Independent cross-checks based on peer-reviewed primary studies are more than available-- there are literally journals dedicated to little else.

Of course, libraries are obviously all part of their master plan to "destroy civilization" and revert humanity to a "hunter-gatherer society". Oh, that sneaky international body of climate scientists, scattered across hundreds of universities, governments, and private institutions! So naughty!

GeneralJim:And, in general terms, your idea that any questioning of any scientist is questioning, or even rejecting, science is erroneous

No, douchebag. My point is only qualified people should question science. For instance in my field you, GeneralJim, do not have the educational background to even understand my research, the methods I use let alone the conclusions I make. You have no business questioning me.

Similarly, you do not have the educational background to understand global warming research, the methods they use let alone the conclusions they make. You have no business questioning them.

And no, knowing the difference between "it's warm today" and "it's cold today" is not good enough background knowledge.

GeneralJim:lennavan: GeneralJim: I have a master's degree in software engineering, ten years experience as a developer, and teach undergraduate-level courses at a university. What are your credentials?

Software engineering? So you know nothing about science? So noted.

I teach a University course on analyzing life sciences in the media. Ya, rly.

I don't have a PhD, and never claimed to have one. I am, however, smart enough to attribute text correctly, as you did NOT, with Tofu's words above. Damn, I even tint my words green, to help out challenged folks like yourself.

In science, if you do not have a PhD, you are a nobody. You tint your words green to garner yourself attention because you like attention.

I also have been an ardent student of science since... well, longer than I can remember.

In the school of? Oh right, self taught. Got it.

Those concepts seem TOTALLY absent in those PhD holders who are trying to force an non-working, falsified theory down everyone's throats, because belief in it will allow corrupt politicians to get more control (and taxes) while creating more research jobs.

Actually, a scientist with credible data or evidence against global warming would get amazing funding because funding loves controversy. The more settled global warming is, the less funding there will be. If everyone on earth agreed that global warming was true, do you think any funding at all would continue in it? You should think your random guesses through before you state them as facts.

Tragically, without having gone through the academic process in science, you know nothing about it. Why do you pretend to?

GeneralJim: But, yes, I support exposing and humiliating any scientist found to be deliberately jacking his data for a specific result. My accusation of Mann's fraud stands.

In the meantime: All charges of scientific misconduct against Mann were dropped.

So, he's as innocent of fraud as OJ is of murder. Glad that's cleared up. And yet, the MWP he is charged with hiding still doesn't show up in the hockey stick graph. Any word on whether or not Michael Mann will be looking for the real data alterers?

So I guess since you're so concerned about those charges, you'll rest easier now.

I rest easy anyway... All the horrid BS the U.N. is trying to do is falling flat. So, no worries.

The CRU is supposed to be one of the, and even THE global repository for climate data.

Only in your head. You seem to need boogeymen.

Sometimes I honestly think you might be retarded, in the literal sense. Do you even understand what they do?

Since the global repository has been fraudulently altered, SOMEONE will have to go back and get the original data from the universities or researchers, and recompile it, and re-integrate the various proxy datasets. That is a metric arseload of work.

Not really. They can go to a library, note that the CRU publishes only a tiny fraction of the total international literature on this topic, and what papers they do publish line up well with existing work. After all, they only employ about 50 people, and couldn't possibly make a dent in the thousands of papers published on climate change. Independent cross-checks based on peer-reviewed primary studies are more than available-- there are literally journals dedicated to little else.

There you go again... It's not about publishing papers, it's about altering data, the data that everyone, ESPECIALLY the U.N. uses. They are the ones that stitch together the dendropaleoclimatological records with the ice core records, with the ground station readings, and the satellite readings to produce a "best guess" at a real history of global climate. And their graphs, along with the underlying data, keep shifting around.

Of course, libraries are obviously all part of their master plan to "destroy civilization" and revert humanity to a "hunter-gatherer society". Oh, that sneaky international body of climate scientists, scattered across hundreds of universities, governments, and private institutions! So naughty!

Hee hee. Hunter-gatherer.

You've just GOT to be twins. Nobody can pack that much stupid in one head. Well, you just go ahead making up shiat and arguing against it. It keeps you from molesting the dog, I suppose.